SUCH A HANDSOME PROFILE!

The most charming description of the local stenopelmatidae I've seen in a while is "people just have to keep in mind that for wildlife, they’re basically Vienna sausages with little bitey jaws" said about potato bugs (Jerusalem crickets) by Lynn Kimsey, director of UC Davis’ Bohart Museum of Entomology and a professor of entomology at the university.
In an article in SFGate which makes them sound quite loveable.
For a cuddly little six-legged wiggle kitten.
With attractive stripes.

Basically, Winnie The Pooh's Tigger, with added limbs and spikey bits.


The only time I encountered one I was both fascinated and repulsed. It sort of looked like the pudgy video game playing chip snarfing computer geek of the insect world. Comic bookstore guy from the Simpsons. The unwashed unexercised software engineers at the old company; we had THREE of that precise type. I could name names, but I don't want my laptop to burst into flames "spontaneously".

One of those gentlemen was known for repairing his underwear with duct tape.

I kind of miss the old company. It was intellectually stimulating.

Potato bugs are non-venomous and slow moving.
They have rather effective jaws.


They're more scared of you than you are of them. Actually, they barely even notice you, not registering you as particularly animate or alive, because they have really tiny brains and to them you are just one more terrifying thing about nature, which for something less than four inches long is one unending bucket of lethal threats anyway. If you don't move you become non-food with a nice temperature. Life, to a bug, is a perpetual state of panic.
Owls and wild canids eat them.




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